The owner of a California roofing company was charged in a $460,000 workers’ compensation fraud scheme that was exposed following the work-related death of an employee.
Charlie Duong, the owner of CD All Roofing, tried to cover that the deceased employee had been working full-time for him for years, according to investigators.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office also accused Duong of falsifying records to show that the driver was part-time and had recently started working for him in order to cut benefits to the deceased employee’s wife.
Further, Duong was accused of faking information regarding his employees to avoid workers’ compensation insurance premiums.
Duong was arraigned July 17, 2023, on insurance fraud felonies and faces jailtime if convicted.
Deceased was owner’s ‘longtime second-in-command’
The fatal incident that led to Duong’s charges occurred on June 19, 2020, when four of his employees were returning from a roofing job. A tire on one of the trucks blew out and the driver overcorrected, causing the crash.
Duong’s longtime second-in-command was ejected from the truck and died, according to investigators.
Evidence revealed that Duong asked the survivor of the crash to lie to investigators by saying that the deceased worker was part-time and had only started a few days prior to the incident.
The employee refused to lie, instead telling investigators that his dead co-worker had been on the job for eight years and worked six days per week.
Duong also attempted to claim that the workers involved in the crash weren’t on the job at the time of the incident, even though they were in company trucks and on the way back from a job when the crash occurred.
